I remember my childhood obsession with airplanes very well – spending hours in a large wardrobe where I’d painstakingly “recreated” the cockpit of a fighter aircraft as realistically as I could at the age of 12 – exquisitely detailed HB-pencil and Crayola renditions of flight instruments, avionics and multiple bogeys, twelve o’clock high – where I’d sit for hours with a motorcycle helmet and a cricket bat serving as my HUD and my control stick, engaged in vivid imaginations of life-and-death dogfights at twenty five thousand feet. My poor parents assumed their kid was probably going to grow up to become an ace fighter pilot (or at the least, fly for an international carrier), that is, until television, videogames and an insatiable lust for pastry made sure my vision nosedived while my midriff went in the opposite direction.

With my flying career aborted before take-off, I found my lust for taking to the skies satisfied by the likes of Dale Brown’s tales of aerial derring-do and games such as Falcon 4.0, Jane’s Combat Simulations, Crimson Skies and Blazing Angels before being welcomed into the experienced embrace of Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator, IL-2 Sturmovik, Ace Combat and the unparalleled Lock On: Modern Air Combat, incidentally another Ubisoft IP. After having suckled at these teats for the better part of a decade now, Ubisoft dangles a brand new pacifier in the form of Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. – a game that challenges Ace Combat to a 1:1 dogfight in its own airspace – toting an all new graphics engine, pick-up-and-play mechanics and a roster of aircraft that puts Fires of Liberation out to pasture. The real question is – can it deliver?

At first glance, Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. seems like an Ace Combat 6 wannabe that’s trying a little too hard to emulate the success of the latter, but spend a couple of hours with the game and you’ll realize that HAWX (which incidentally stands for High-Altitude Warfare Experimental Squadron, so yeah, glad we got that out of the way) has actually managed to carve a niche all for itself when it comes to the aerial combat genre. Set in 2014, between the events of Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 and EndWar, the game puts players in the jumpsuit of USAF pilot David Crenshaw – squadron leader for the HAWX program, in-charge of providing close air support for the Ghost team on the ground. After the USAF decides to pull the plug on HAWX, Crenshaw and his fellow pilots find themselves contracting their services out to Artemis Global Security, a private military company that puts the team to good use for a couple of years, before absolute power corrupts them absolutely and they decide they want to play with the big boys now. Without spoiling the story any further, twists that aren’t entirely unexpected develop and Crenshaw and his wingmen are tasked once again with making sure that the patriotic banner is kept flying high. While it’s apparent that Tom Clancy probably didn’t have much to do with the story and the writing, considering how much he writes these days, it still does a surprisingly good job of keeping you engaged as you run through the missions, bringing in a number of familiar faces and agencies from other Tom Clancy games such as GRAW, EndWar and Splinter Cell – in typical Tom Clancy Ryanverse fashion.

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• Max Says:
  Sunday, May 17th, 2009 05:13 am GMT +5.5 at 5:13 am

  I just noticed that you said a few thing about the graphics and overall effects that aren’t true. and a few that you diddnt mention.
  1. in off mode you can see dust and water spray when flying low
  2. in several missions you can run out of fuel
  3. graphics for A.I. planes are poor
  4. physics for A.I. aren’t as good as player physics
  5 i agree with the damage, i wish there was visible damage, an the explosions suck.

• jamesedgeuk2000 Says:
  Thursday, August 20th, 2009 04:37 pm GMT +5.5 at 4:37 pm

  Just wanted to say this is a great review but the is a MAJOR flaw wiht this game that you avoided (or didnt play long enought to see) and that is tht it hits the mothe rof all walls, to unlock all planes oyu need to reach level 40 however completing he single player campaign will take oyu to about level 22-23, complete all the challenges (except the insane, fly at 5ft for a minute ones) and youll hit L25 and thats it, no more bonus xp, you now have to do 15 levels just by repeating missions and oding multiplayer and it will take FOREVER, a fantastic game but sadly its gonna be a few months before i see my favourite plane the SU-35